an independent creative arts journal
By Christian Johnson
Posted on
Joe’s Shopping list January
Joseph and Sydney’s Shopping List February
Joseph and Sydney Shopping list March
By Alexandra Van
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She didn’t know she was having an affair until she broke up with her. There were moments when she would have left her husband. Quiet moments, almost silent moments, when she would have ended her marriage. For what? For nothing. For something that existed only at the margins, in the imagination.
What will she remember about her? A seemingly honest laugh that wanted to fill the room, but was always stifled. An endless curiosity. A soul-wrenching once-in-a-life-time curiosity that felt ceaselessly flattering. A charm tinged with vulnerability that she knew was irresistible. A razor-sharp intelligence, so often on display. An uncommon understanding, whether real or imagined, that was at once thrilling and piercing.
How did it end? With nothing. With yet another agonizing retreat. With yet another silence.…
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By Sheila Sundar
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Adham comes to our room most nights. Sometimes when I arrive he’s already settled in the space next to his mother. Sometimes he comes in only after I walk through the door. His body ends at my hips and when I lie next to him his hands find their way into the heavy folds of my neck. He no longer smells like baby, but like dust, like the thin ring of mildew below our sink, like our clothes when Farzana hangs them on the line too soon after it’s rained. He’s already decaying, just four years after he is born. I wonder why it has to start so early.
He’s not in our bed tonight. I leave the door open to the bathroom as I wash my hands, the lavender exorcising the feel of the airplane, the memory of Aerolife from my hands. …
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By Paul Costa
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Cole Santos sat cross legged on his bed and tore open the letter for which he’d been waiting. In the weeks before its arrival he woke up early with a pounding heart, felt sweat in his palms whenever he checked the mailbox, and allowed himself to entertain fantasies about its possibly positive contents.
Cole read the letter. When he finished he folded it neatly, inserted it back into its envelope and gently placed the letter on the bedspread in front of him. Something moved inside him. He inhaled and expanded his chest. He exhaled and collapsed his chest. He felt stillness within him once more. Cole raised one hand and looked at it. He clenched it into a fist before relaxing it and opening his palm.…
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By Ruth Deming
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For seven long years
she was my client
I counseled her for naught
As she said, You’re just a
paid friend.
She loved nothing better
than taking medication
she thought it would fix her
a woman who could never
be fixed.
In utero, she was doused
with a diet of caviar and
booze, by a brilliant mother,
also named Julie, who won the
advertising account for
Look Magazine.…
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By Bruce Costello
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“How may I assist you, Sir?” A white haired salesman wearing a dark suit and tie called out from behind the counter. There was a halo of blue light around his head.
Bazza, in a hoodie and low-slung baggy trousers, gazed past him, looking for the guys who’d served him last time, regular dudes in Whizz Electronics tee shirts who skateboarded to work.
“Alright,” he said, noticing the man’s tie begin to pulsate and change colour. “I wanna buy a new cell phone, mate, one I can use for Skyping.”
“I’m sorry, Sir. Cell phones haven’t been invented yet.”
“You’re a fecken riot, you are. I gotta get a new cell phone so I can Skype my girl, Sheila. She’s splitting to The Big Apple next week.…
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By Ryan Seylhouwer
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In the same way that strangers on the train might communicate through subconscious cues it was apparent, at least from the periphery, that she was wary of anyone she might objectively qualify as deserving of her love; not because of her upbringing or past experiences but because of the paranoia stemming from a vapid and distant society that pushes the intimacies of human relations to brief economic exchanges and the violence of the streets.
She meets with her peers on this level only after surviving the cruel gears of humanity, and it was this distrust of other people that served as the bond between her and her friends. Not that she made these bonds intentionally or even consciously but she did consciously jeer at strangers on the street, especially men and especially men of a different generation without really knowing why except for the realization that, they too, survived the gears of humanity but from a different vantage point.…
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